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CBI arrests 4 for falsely promising Rajya Sabha seats for ₹100 crore
The Central Bureau of Investigation has arrested four persons for allegedly attempting to dupe certain people by offering them seats in Rajya Sabha for ₹100 crore, officials said
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has arrested four persons for allegedly attempting to dupe certain people by offering them seats in Rajya Sabha for ₹100 crore, officials familiar with the matter said on Monday.
Besides Rajya Sabha, the accused persons also offered the posts of governorship and chairmanship of various government organisations in lieu of bribes, the officials added.
A special CBI court, however, later granted bail to all the four persons.
The accused were identified as Kamalakar Premkumar Bandgar of Maharashtra’s Latur, Ravindra Vithal Naik of Karnataka’s Belgaum, and Delhi-NCR-based Mahendra Pal Arora and Abhishek Boora. They were arrested during raids in seven locations in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka last week, the officials cited above said.
A fifth accused, Mohammed Aijaz Khan of Delhi-NCR, managed to escape after assaulting the CBI officers and a separate case has been registered against him with the local police, the officials added.
According to the agency’s first information report (FIR) filed on July 15 and reviewed by HT, Bandgar posed as a senior CBI officer and flaunted his connections with highly placed officers. He asked Boora, Arora, Khan and Naik to bring any sort of work that he could fix in lieu of payment of huge illegal gratification.
The accused subsequently conspired with “the sole ulterior motive of cheating private persons by falsely assuring them for arrangement of seats in Rajya Sabha, appointment as governor, appointment as chairman in different government-run organisations under central government ministries and departments against huge pecuniary consideration”, the CBI said.
Information gathered by the agency revealed that Boora and Bandgar discussed how the latter’s purported connection with high-ranking officials who play pivotal roles in appointments can be exploited to get the work done.
“It surfaced that the accused were attempting to cheat people by falsely assuring them of candidature for Rajya Sabha against a huge consideration to the tune of ₹100 crores,” the FIR said.
Bandgar, Arora, Khan and Naik would often drop names of senior bureaucrats and political functionaries to impress clients approaching them for some work, either directly or through a middleman like Boora.
It also emerged that Bandgar posed as a senior CBI officer and threatened police officials of various police stations to grant favours to people known to him, or to influence investigations of ongoing cases, according to the FIR.
